The Senate State Affairs Committee began consideration of Gov. Greg Abbott’s emergency item of Texas joining the call for a national Convention of States with Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, the lead Senate sponsor, warning that “we are on the precipice of history we have not seen before.”

Birdwell said the “federal government has been usurping state power,” leaving the states as nothing more than “subcontractors,” and a new Convention of States to amend the U.S. Constitution under a process envisaged by Article V of the Constitution is critical to restore the states to their rightful place in the federal system.